Russian-Australian pianist and teacher (born 1956)

Musical artist

Natalia Lvovna "Natasha" Vl*enko (Russian: Ната́лья Льво́вна Вла́сенко; born 20 November 1956) is a Russian-Australian pianist and teacher.

Life

Natasha Vl*enko was born in Moscow, Soviet Russia, to pianist Lev Nikolaevich Vl*enko and English teacher Mikaella Yakovlevna Krutatsovskaya.

Vl*enko was a graduate of Moscow Central Music School under Eleonora Musaelyan. She studied in the Moscow Conservatory under the famous pianist and teacher Yakov Flier. After his death, she continued her postgraduate studies in the cl* of Flier's pupil professor Lev Vl*enko. She began her artistic career as a soloist of the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra. She commenced her pedagogic activities as a piano teacher in the Central Music School.

In 1977, she won third prize at the International Beethoven Compe*ion in Vienna. In 1985, she went on to win third prize at the Ferruccio Busoni International Piano Compe*ion in Bolzano, Italy.

At present, Vl*enko resides in Australia. She is Head of Keyboard at the Queensland Conservatorium Griffith University. Many of her students have become prizewinners of national and international compe*ions and professors in music high schools in the United States, Ireland and Australia.

In 1999, Vl*enko and her husband Oleg Stepanov co-founded the Lev Vl*enko Piano Compe*ion in memory of her father Lev Vl*enko. Vl*enko and Stepanov have since taken up the roles of artistic directors of the piano compe*ion. The compe*ion is the only major piano event in Australia that mirrors the requirements of an international compe*ion and is held in Brisbane every two years since 1999.

Vl*enko has performed in Russia, Italy, Germany, Austria, *an, New Zealand, China, Australia, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Vietnam and other countries. She has performed under the batons of many conductors such as Gennady Rozhdestvensky, Karl Österreicher, Karl Martin, Mikhail Pletnev, Vladimir Verbitsky, Richard Hickox, Edvard Tchivzhel, Veronika Dudarova and John Curro.

She has recorded a number of CDs in Russia and Australia and is a distinguished artist on the Master Performers record label.

References